


i'll be damned

by prettyluke (buttonjimin)



Series: the lack long after [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: 7 parts, EASILY the saddest thing i've written, M/M, bear w me bc i don't have a lung disease, luke is chronically ill with a lung disease, this is 15x15 all the way through 24x24
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 14:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5931190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttonjimin/pseuds/prettyluke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke is sick, and sometimes Ashton feels like he's the one who can't breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll be damned

**Author's Note:**

> quick warning that luke does die, but this is written in a weird non-chronological way so sometimes he's dead and sometimes he's not and i'll usually tell you how old they are. the scenes in the same time period are separated by --- and the scenes that are in drastically distant years are separated by a break. this is horrifically sad and i have no shame  
> based off of i'll be damned by pianos become the teeth; this is part of a 7-part series based on the bigger album, the lack long after.

“I can’t breathe,” Luke says. His head is pillowed on Ashton’s chest where they lie on the broad windowsill, Ashton sitting halfway upright to support Luke’s weight. Luke is a crumpled piece of paper, a baby bird who fell from the nest too soon and is lying broken on the pavement. Luke’s spine presses against the skin of his back, begging to be released. Ashton traces his fingers over the bumps sometimes. It makes Luke shiver. 

“Tilt your head forward,” Ashton reminds him, sitting up a bit himself to elevate Luke’s body. Luke puts his hand over the plastic that covers his mouth and does as Ashton tells him, shifting with Ashton so he can angle his head and take a few deep, strained breaths. Now Ashton feels his spine, digging into his stomach. He needs Ashton to keep him upright these days. 

Luke’s body relaxes again, going limp against Ashton’s. Ashton rests his hand on Luke’s forehead where his hair meets his skin, scraggly and dull. Luke makes an unhappy noise. “You smell like sanitizer,” he complains. “You don’t smell like you.”

Ashton thinks if he smelled like himself, Luke would be dead, the smell of the cologne Ashton used to wear before Luke got too sick clogging his lungs up. Or maybe Ashton would simply smell of rotting flesh, a moment of truth where he’s as dead outside as he feels inside. But he says nothing, always nothing, and listens to the sound of Luke wheezing, muffled by the mask over half his face. 

They’re nineteen, and Ashton is taking time off from college to be here. It’s a week after, and Luke hasn’t talked about it.

Which is okay, really. They spend most of their time in this room in silence, or relatively so, since nobody talks but the machines. Ashton can see Luke curling in on himself and trying to shield his soft torso from the world, protecting his heart in every sense of the word. Ashton won’t ask. He wasn’t there when Luke stopped breathing and Jack carried him into the ER like he’d carried his baby brother the day he was born. Luke said he doesn’t remember much of it, but Ashton thinks he’d rather look away and pretend to himself than relive that night. Ashton wasn’t there, so he doesn’t ask.

But today Luke breaks the silence with a sentence. 

“I went under that day,” he says, as casually as always. Ashton stops stroking his hair back for a moment, taking a second to listen. His heart speeds up, eager to swallow what Luke has to say. “I think I saw something.”

**_Maybe you saw your mother, maybe she’s smiling._ **

“Saw what?” Ashton says, cautious and nervous. It must have scared Luke, whatever it is he saw that night. He could have described it in perfect detail, the feeling of his vision going yellow as he struggled to stay awake and the impending panic he always feels when he goes through an exacerbation. Only this time, the inhaler wasn’t enough. And something happened, something switched in Luke. Ashton can tell, because he’s quieter this time. 

“It was something,” Luke says, sighing and shutting his eyes. Ashton resumes stroking his hair as Luke’s hand stretches out toward the window, reaching for something he’s lost that he can’t put his finger on now.

“Did you see the light?” Ashton jokes, and Luke’s body wriggles against his, shaking with quiet laughter. Ashton hasn’t heard him laugh wholeheartedly since it happened; maybe soon they’re going to add it to the list of things he’s banned to do. Anything to preserve what little he has left. Ashton wonders often what their lives would be like if they didn’t need to make morbid jokes and try to transform something so heavy into something light.

There’s only one universe, he thinks, and they have to make the best of what they’ve been given.

“Maybe,” Luke says, and Ashton can’t see his smile, so he hears it instead. “I was almost there.”

“And then they pulled you back,” Ashton finishes, resisting the urge to squeeze Luke tighter. His chest feels heavier than before.

“And then they pulled me back.” Luke’s soft, thoughtful eyes look for something in the distance. They’ve always had to make up for the rest of his body. Now, it doesn’t even seem enough.

“Maybe they’ll let you out of here soon,” Ashton suggests as lightheartedly as he can. “We can get you home, and take this stupid thing off your face so I can kiss you properly.”

Luke takes a long time to answer, wetting his lips and his mouth parting as if preparing to respond. Maybe he’s thinking about it, considering it. Maybe he’s too tired to do any of that, and Ashton overestimates him.

“I can’t breathe,” he says finally.

 

* * *

 

They’re fifteen, and they’ve been talking about this trip for months. Ashton’s never left Australia, and he’s built it up in his head, what America is going to be like. They’re going tomorrow afternoon; they’re going to board a plane together, share a hotel room together, and somehow try not to kiss in front of Luke’s mum. Ashton can hardly contain himself, and he feels special, even, that he gets to leave his mother and his younger siblings behind and do something so thrilling. It’s going to be  _ their  _ trip, and it’s going to be perfect.

“What do you think the hotel room will look like?” Luke whispers, snuggling closer to Ashton’s side. The lights are off in the room, and the little stars and moons Luke stuck up on his ceiling glow almost eerily. Luke’s cold toes curl against Ashton’s legs, seeking Ashton’s warmth. Ashton tries to picture the room for Luke, give him something to dream about tonight. 

“I bet it’ll have a really big bed,” Ashton whispers back. “So we can share it, and I’ll have to make you wear socks so you don’t freeze my legs off like you’re doing now.”

Luke giggles and curls even tighter against Ashton, persistent and unsympathetic. His head nestles its way onto Ashton’s shoulder. “Tell me more. Tell me what it’ll look like.”

“It’ll have a huge window for us to see the ocean, and you’ll be afraid of falling down into it.”

“No I won’t!” Luke whispers indignantly.

“You will be, but I wouldn’t let you fall,” Ashton says confidently. “And the bathroom will have a bathtub big enough for both of us to fit in. Maybe there’s a jacuzzi in the room, and we can sit in there together with the jets and the lights.”

“It’s going to be nice,” Luke says, sighing happily. “We’re going to have so much fun.”

Ashton can hardly breathe when he thinks about it; it’s that exciting. All the other kids on the baseball team are going to be jealous that they went to the American Baseball Hall of Fame. He’s saved up his money in his old piggy bank to buy something there, to bring it back and show the other kids and the coach. They’ll all want to hear about what he and Luke saw.

“I’m so excited,” Ashton says out of the blue, feeling it come back again. Luke doesn’t respond, so Ashton moves his leg and knees Luke in the groin, earning an offended groan. Luke kicks him back, and Ashton digs his fingers into Luke’s sides, playing dirty to stay ahead. Luke dissolves into giggles and slaps at Ashton pushing him away and giving up, but their laughter echoes in the tiny room, their efforts to stay quiet long diminished.

After a few minutes of shoving and wrestling under the covers, the door bursts open, and they fly apart, faces heated from laughing so hard. It’s Luke’s mother, come to tell them to get some sleep for tomorrow.

**_She hears your catching laughter, she’s missed your charm._ **

“Quiet down,” she says, though there’s a hint of a smile playing at her lips. Ashton can hardly see, with the hall light illuminating the space behind her and leaving her front in shadow. “You’re going to need your energy for all the traveling we’re going to do. I know you’re excited, but you have to do your best to get some sleep.”

“We can’t,” Luke says, drawing out the word  _ can’t _ and laughing. “We’re too excited. It’s like Christmas.”

“Well, I’m not waking you two up in the morning, so if you stay up too late, I’ll be flying to New York on my own,” she says smugly. “Get to bed, sillies.”

“ _ Okay _ , Mum,” Luke says impatiently. “Go away now.”

Liz just clucks at him and shuts the door carefully. Luke laughs, burying his head in Ashton’s shoulder again. Ashton shifts to cradle Luke closer, always gentle, trying to protect the fragile excuse of a boy next to him. Bones, bones, bones, they’re always there, and Ashton hates them. But he loves Luke.

“We better sleep,” Ashton says, trying to shift into a position where his arm doesn’t feel like it’s losing its circulation. But he doesn’t mind, if he gets to stay this close to Luke all night.

“You’re right.” Luke yawns right on cute and snuggles as close as he can, pressed right up against Ashton. “I can’t wait for tomorrow.”

“Me neither.” Ashton kisses the top of Luke’s head, the only place he can reach from this vantage point. “Goodnight, Luke.”

“Night.”

\---

Ashton wakes up that night to a startling noise that he quickly recognizes. Luke is sitting on the edge of the bed, wheezing and intermittently coughing. His shoulders jerk every time he coughs, each one followed by an audible swallow. It sounds like his usual asthma attacks, only it’s the middle of the night and it just sounds so much worse.

“Luke,” he whispers, lacking the energy to sit up just yet. “Do you want me to get your mum?”

Luke wheezes a few times before he gets the breath to pause and shake his head, then resumes his labored breathing. He pushes off the bed and drops to his knees in front of his bed side table, pulling open the drawer and fumbling for something. In Ashton’s groggy head, it clicks: Luke needs his inhaler.

It’s okay, Ashton thinks. He’s going to find it, he’ll take it, and everything will be okay. There’s no reason for him to be scared.

Luke can’t find the inhaler. He just keeps fumbling and fumbling, and Ashton thinks his hands are shaking, but he can’t tell in the dark. Luke has been breathing heavily all weekend, which Luke’s mum had said was probably just overexcitement and his dad’s smoke finding its way inside the house. But it’s not easing, so Ashton climbs over to Luke’s side of the bed and starts looking too, brushing Luke aside so Luke can sit against the bed and focus on his breathing. Eventually, his hand closes around what Luke couldn’t locate, and he opens the plastic bag and grabs the inhaler. He hands it to Luke, who shakes it weakly and puts it to his mouth, taking it in desperately. Ashton sits back beside him, the frame of the bed digging harshly into his back. It must be worse for Luke, who is all bones and no padding. 

Luke holds his breath for a few seconds after and then lets it out, sputtering and coughing. Ashton reaches over and tentatively rubs his shoulder. Luke’s wheezes have slowed and quieted slightly, but enough for him to get a little relief. “You’re okay,” Ashton whispers, trying to calm him. Luke’s shivery hand finds Ashton’s knee, fingers sprawling over it and gripping slightly. Support, that’s what he wants. 

“We should”— _ wheeze _ —“Go back to bed.” Luke is rigid under Ashton’s touch. He doesn’t lean his head on Ashton’s shoulder like he usually would; the position would probably obstruct his breathing too much. Ashton simply nods his assent and helps haul Luke up. He gets Luke settled in bed and then settles beside him. 

Luke falls asleep with his inhaler in his hand, and he coughs the whole night long.

\---

Ashton wakes up that morning alone. It’s jarring, since he usually wakes up before Luke and if Luke happens to wake up first, he usually shakes Ashton awake. A quick look at the clock tells him that they’re going to be late for the flight if he doesn’t hurry. Panic electrifies him. Did they leave for New York without him? 

He slides out of bed, his heart thumping in his chest. He’s late, Luke’s gone. Both very good reasons for distress. He stumbled out into the kitchen, where Luke’s oldest brother, Ben, sits at the table. Ben doesn’t look up; the house is oddly silent, no sign of Luke or his parents or his other brother Jack. Just Ben. 

“Where’s Luke?” he asks. His mouth is dry and tastes bad, the way it always does before he washes it out and brushes his teeth. Did he misread the time? Maybe Luke and his mum went to grab something last minute. 

Ben finally looks up and meets his eyes and says, completely calm, “Sit down.” He kicks out a chair across from his own, and gestures at it, waiting patiently. Ashton, feeling stupid and nervous, listens. He scoots the chair in, resting his forearms on the table, and waits. 

Ben puts down the newspaper that he’d been reading when Ashton walked in. Ever placid, Ben stares at Ashton unrelentingly with the same blue eyes as Luke’s. “You’re getting a raw deal, kid,” he says, and Ashton bristles at the use of  _ kid _ when Ben’s just four years older. “Luke went to the hospital around seven this morning.”

It’s almost nine now. Luke’s been gone for two hours, in god knows what kind of health, and he didn’t know. Didn’t sense it, so even if Luke is his soulmate, he doesn’t feel Luke’s pain resonating in himself. Ashton vaguely connects last night’s coughing and wheezing fit with this news. 

“The hospital,” he repeats dumbly. “It was his asthma.”

“What?”

“His asthma, last night he couldn’t breathe. I got up to find his inhaler.”

Ben sighs and leans back, one arm stretched on the table and the other rubbing his temple. “Ashton, it’s more than that. Didn’t he tell you?”

Ashton feels dumb, dumb, so dumb. What didn’t Luke tell him? What kind of fool has he been? He waits, heart settling somewhere in his throat. Ben clears his throat, musters up a guilty look, an apology for leaving Ashton in the dark all this time.

“The inhaler is to relax the muscles in his lungs,” Ben says finally. “Luke’s got a lung disease. He was coughing up blood this morning, so Mum and Dad and Jack took him in.”

Ashton is flooded with a mix of worry, disbelief, and disorientation. “Lung disease,” he stumbles out, his throat trying to close. It sounds serious, which can’t be right; Luke’s only fifteen. Fifteen-year-olds don’t have to deal with serious things. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve known since he was twelve. I always assumed you knew—but then, if you’d known, you wouldn’t have  _ wasted _ so much time on him,” Ben adds bitterly. It’s out of character, it’s wrong. Everything is so wrong. Quickly, Ben regains his composure and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m gonna drive you home.”

\---

Luke is lying on top of the covers of the hospital bed when Ashton visits later in the afternoon. By now, all the initial fuss has died down. The nurse makes him sanitize his hands twice before he goes into the room. Liz goes in with him to bring Luke the food he brought. The hall is quiet, and he can hear his own thoughts echoing, his nerves rattling.

When he finishes cleaning his hands to the best of his ability, he goes inside. The only thing he sees are Luke’s spindly legs, poking out from a blue hospital gown. His face and upper body are obscured by various machines. 

“Someone’s here to see you,” Liz says, and Ashton walks further in, around the foot of the bed to see Luke. Luke, catching sight of Ashton, bolts upright into a sitting position. He yanks the oxygen mask off his face and beams, reaching out and making grabby hands for Ashton to come closer. 

“Now, I brought you some food,” Liz says, setting it on his tray table. Luke hardly looks at it. “I’ll be back in a little while. Ashton, make sure he puts his mask back on and complies with the nurses.”

“Mum,” Luke whines, every bit as petulant as he can be back home, even while lying in a hospital bed and looking sickly. 

“You heard me. You boys will be alright on your own?”

“Yes, Mum, honestly. I’m fine.”

“I’m sending a nurse by in fifteen minutes, so don’t think I’m not checking up on you.”

Liz leaves the room and shuts the door. Ashton stands awkwardly by the side of the bed, hovering. He hasn’t been to a hospital since Harry was born, and then his mum had stayed for a week after because it had been such a demanding pregnancy. He remembers bringing her lunch like Liz does for Luke, trying to be good and responsible and take care of his mum and Lauren too. The neighbor who babysat them could never get Lauren to stop crying the way he had. this time it feels different; he’s older now, and hasn’t been assured that the patient is going to live and come home and everything will be fine. 

The first thing he does is give Luke a big hug. It’s not the most comforting thing; Ashton can fit his arms probably twice around this twig of a boy, but it does reassure him to feel Luke, solid and warm, under his hands. “You scared me to death,” he grumbles. Luke rolls his eyes and huffs. 

“I’m fine, look at me.” Luke’s hair is a mess, and his eyes are droopy from lack of sleep and fatigue. His nose is a red, raw mess, and his tray table is littered with used tissues. “I’m the picture of health.”

Ashton bites his lip and looks down, wanting to be engaged in Luke’s upbeat behavior but finding himself unable to. The quiet of the room is punctuated by Luke’s rhythmic wheezes. Luke coughs weakly and clears his throat. 

“Ashton?” he presses gently. “I’m fine, really. You don’t have to be worried. Honest.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a lung disease,” Ashton blurts out. Luke blanches and his smile fades.  _ Busted.  _ Luke’s chin drops to his chest and he takes a labored breath before sniffling and trying to return to his previous façade. 

“Who told you?” he asks. He’s not angry that Ashton can tell of, but he slumps dejectedly and reaches to put his oxygen mask back on. The mask makes his voice sound hollow, rattled. 

“Ben.” Ashton’s hand latches onto the plastic railing of Luke’s bed and he rocks back and forth slightly, trusting the railing to hold his weight. “I woke up alone, you know. I must have slept right through everything. He said you were coughing up blood.”

“Well, it wasn’t, like, awful,” Luke says, frowning and tapping his pulse monitor-enclosed finger on his thigh. “It’s not like I was spattering blood everywhere, or something, I’m not dying. It’s just, I cough up mucus most of the time, and this morning there was some blood in it, and Mum freaked out. I freaked out a little, too.”

Ashton nods, wishing he’d been there to comfort Luke like he always is. “So, what’s this mysterious lung disease?”

Luke pauses a moment, thinking about it, and then scoots over on the bed and pats the space next to him. “Come up.”

Ashton hesitantly does so, lifting himself up onto the bed and settling onto the thin mattress that dips significantly deeper where he sits than where Luke does. Luke fumbles at the side of bed and the bed begins to fold, pulling the head of the bed upright so they can lean against it. It isn’t the most comfortable thing, and Ashton doesn’t know how Luke isn’t bothered, at least not visibly, by it. But it feels familiar, sitting next to Luke in a bed, even a stiff and foreign one. 

“I can’t explain it like a doctor,” Luke admits. He puts his hand over the oxygen mask almost habitually; Ashton wonders if it’s too loose, or if he’s just used to it being too loose and does it without thinking now. “It’s called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease. A lot of smokers get it, and most people my age don’t have it, obviously, but there are a lot of ways you can get it. You know how much my dad smokes. He used to smoke more, when I was a kid. We lived in all these apartments where you weren’t allowed to smoke, and if he smoked on the balcony the neighbors would call the landlord and get us kicked out, so he’d cover the smoke detector with a shower cap and smoke inside. I guess I couldn’t breathe very well at some point and I started coughing a lot, and so my mum took me in to the doctor and he said I had asthma. I mean, he was wrong, but the medication for asthma and COPD is pretty much the same, so we couldn’t tell that it was, you know, the wrong diagnosis.”

“You always said it was asthma.”

“Literally no twelve-year-old wants to come back from a weekend at the hospital and tell the only kid who actually, voluntarily chooses to sit next to him, that he’s just been diagnosed with a lung disease he’s going to be stuck with for life.” Ashton can hear Luke’s sarcasm, the same tone that he usually uses for his biting humor, only he wishes Luke would just be serious for once. “I mean, come on, Ash, I was just a kid. I didn’t want you to be freaked out about it. You already thought I had asthma, so I stuck with it. Big fucking deal, okay. I don’t need this from you.”

“I’m not mad,” Ashton says, putting his arm around Luke’s shoulders to comfort him. “I wish you’d have told me, is all.”

“I should have,” Luke sighs, his sharpness dropping. Tensions are high, so Ashton can excuse his irritation. After all, he’s in the hospital. Some things have to slide. “I know. There was never a good time to say it.”

The room lapses into silence again, and Ashton searches for something to make him feel better about it. “They’re going to fix it, though,” he says, though he has no idea what’s going to happen. “Right?”

“They think it’s just a cold,” Luke chokes out, and then suddenly he reaches up to grind the heels of his hands into his eyes, refusing to cry. “They don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Ashton reminds him, pulling at his hands to bring them back down to his lap. Luke lets him with only mild resistance; his eyes already look red and bloodshot.

Luke’s lip trembles as he talks, and he fights to calm down when the tears start spilling over. That’s it, then. All that bravado just to cover up how painfully fifteen he is. Ashton squeezes his shoulders tighter, resting his chin over the top of Luke’s head, trying to get him to stop crying. Luke always cries like a flash flood, with no warning and no sign of stopping. 

“I’m already stage two,” Luke chokes out, heaving for air. It’s worse than if nothing was wrong with his lungs. Crying this heavily, with his blocked lungs, makes it even harder for him to breathe. “I don’t want to be stage three.”

Ashton doesn’t know what to do except to keep holding him, and make those shushing noises he heard his mum make when she was trying to get Harry to quiet down, the same shushing noises he used to quiet Lauren when she wasn’t home and the same shushing noises he makes now. It’s probably not because of him that Luke eventually gets enough breath settled in his lungs to inhale deeply enough to begin to quiet down. Still, a few shaky breaths and he’s already calming down, sitting up and pushing Ashton away. He’s used to this, Ashton realizes. Four years of being friends and one year of casual dating and Ashton’s only just been let into his scary world. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Luke hisses, shaking his head and pulling the mask off to wipe off the last tears. “I almost forgot. The trip, Cooperstown! What time is it? How long have I been here?”

“It’s no use,” Ashton says sadly, and Luke completely droops. “Flight’s long gone. We’re not going.”

“Oh.” Luke seems to struggle not to burst into tears again, taking rapid breaths. He turns toward Ashton, pulling his knees up to his chest and hunching forward, always protecting himself. “I’m sorry, I’m so—I ruined everything.”

Ashton turns too, so he can reach forward and take Luke’s face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over Luke’s cheekbones The plastic is cold and hard under the jut of where his thumb meets his hand. His hands aren’t as steady as they usually are, and he looks down for a moment, trying to keep his cool. “You didn’t ruin it,” he says finally. “You’re sick, and no stupid trip is more important to me than you are.”

Luke nods reluctantly. He brings up one hand, the one without a clunky pulse monitor, to cover Ashton’s. They stay there for a minute, lost in the sphere they’ve fallen into. Luke, clinging desperately to Ashton’s support, and Ashton, trying to find something to say. 

“You should kiss me,” Luke says shyly. He taps his mask. “I can take this off, you know.” He gives Ashton a hopeful smile and reaches to begin lifting it off. 

“No, no,” Ashton disagrees, pushing Luke’s hand away to stop him. Luke sighs, ducking his head. “You need it to breathe.”

In the silence, Luke seems to shrink and tighten up. Eventually, he whispers, “We’ll go to Cooperstown next year, maybe.”

“Yeah,” Ashton says, nodding. “Next year.”

**_We never made it to Cooperstown_ **

 

* * *

 

**_But I’ve still got that glove under my bed._ **

Ashton is older, so much older. He only comes back here now to visit his mother, but he comes back today for Luke’s birthday. His room is untouched, incomplete, frozen in time, like Luke’s youth. His bed still feels like summer kisses that never came to fruition. If he shuts his eyes, he can still see Luke, limbs sprawled over the comforter like a baby deer’s, and if he searches harder, he can feel himself tangled among those limbs. But they’re gone, they’re gone, and those limbs are just bones now, the skeletal echo of his fragile body.

He has flowers, the stems pressing together in the grip of his hand. He’s carried them all the way from out of town, in preparation. It’s Luke’s first birthday since he allowed the dirt to embrace him and draw him down, and Ashton wishes he had stayed home.

Ashton kneels on the scuffed hardwood floor and reaches under his bed, feeling even and coarse material slide under his fingers when he reaches far enough. He hooks his fingers over the lip of the cardboard box and pulls it out slowly, listening to the noise it makes when it exerts force back on the floor, trying to hold on and stay hidden, stay locked away. He has to steel himself to pull open the flaps and see what’s inside.

He would know everything inside by touch, but there’s no use in that. Keepsakes and mementos are crammed to the brim. One of Luke’s hoodies, photos of them together, the baseball trophy they won on the same team at 14, dumb sketches they’d pass back and forth in class, a cheap ring Ashton won for Luke at the arcade at 13. More things, broken or dusty, that litter the box. On the top is the baseball glove Ashton wanted to take to Cooperstown so they could play in the park.

**_“Have a catch,”_ **

He leaves the baseball glove where it is and stands, pushing the box back under his bed with his foot. Nothing worth taking to Luke. So he clutches the flowers tighter and heads out the door, to his car. The flowers along the stone walkway are dying; his mother doesn’t have the time to take care of them properly, and Ashton has never been able to keep things alive. But he doesn’t step on them nonchalantly. He avoids them, allowing them to keep the whisper of life they might still breathe.

He’s too young still to feel this wistful as he drives through his hometown. He didn’t grow up with Luke in these streets, but they perused them together, played catch in front of his house, camped in his backyard, raced down the street. The wandered up and down the road and talked about the future and school and the boys in the movies they thought were cute, and they held hands under the oak tree on the corner at the edge of the neighborhood and kissed for the first time. They ate ice cream in the summer at the ice cream parlor down the street and practiced with their team in the baseball diamond at the park. It makes his chest tighten to know that Luke can’t cruise down these streets in the passenger seat of Ashton’s car and laugh about it.

Ashton pulls over several times when his eyes start blurring. He can barely see the road sometimes. Luke is right beside him some moments and gone the next. When Ashton looks out of the corner of his eyes, Luke is almost there again. 

Ashton’s stopped the car one too many times and he realizes with a jolt that he’s lost, he doesn’t know where he is, and Luke would tell him where to go and how to get to the cemetery, only Luke isn’t here, and it doesn’t matter how hard he squints. The further he drives the more desperate he gets.

“I’m coming,” he whispers, reaching for Luke in his mind’s eye, trying to latch onto something of his memory to pull him there. But there’s nothing. He’s disoriented, dizzy, out of breath for no reason. He is overwhelmed and small and when his car idles and dies, someone honks behind him so loudly he fumbles the key in the ignition and lets the other cars swerve around him as he tries to get through the intersection.

He jerks the car over to the side of the road on the other side of the intersection with a screech of tires, letting the engine die again and sitting there with his chest heaving for a minute. His eyes sting and he can’t see the road anymore, and the flowers, still glued to the palm of his hand, are wilted and droopy. 

**_but for now it’s catch my breath,_ **

“Fuck,” he yells, banging the top of the dashboard and then slumping over it, letting his tears slide down the black leather of the steering wheel. The petals of the flower tickle his forehead, a gentle reminder, and he opens his palm and lets them fall, watching them scatter on the floor of his car. His mind is flooded with the horrible, screaming need to find Luke again and remind him how much he loves him. He’s angry, he’s furious, at the universe and how it worked things out. He doesn’t know who he’s yelling and babbling at, just that he is, because it echoes painfully in his ears.

**_it’s catch my tears._ **

He doesn’t make it to the cemetery that first year, and it’s just the last in a long line of his failures for Luke. He sits on the side of the road sobbing for an hour until someone finally knocks on the window of the car to ask if he’s alright and if they should call someone. And then he cries on the way home, because he knows Luke is watching somewhere, and wishing he’d made it to the graveyard after all.

 

* * *

 

It’s winter of Ashton’s first year out of college, working on a marketing team under some little tech company that’s going under. Not the best start to his career, honestly, since the last to be hired is the first to be fired. Luke thinks it’s a good place to begin. “You’re a people person,” Luke told him. “It suits you.”

Ashton took the job over a better one farther away, so he could be at home for Luke, but Luke doesn’t need that knowledge on his shoulders when he’s already staring down the barrel of his own mortality.

He hasn’t been there for most of Luke’s exacerbations; they happen sporadically, caused by anything from his dad’s smoke before he kicked it when Luke was 19 and almost died, to cologne, to a simple cold. Some are worse than others, little disturbances that do little more than exasperate Luke, even while his family frets around him. Some, like this one, are huge. 

They’re in the car on the freeway, Ben at the wheel and Jack, Ashton and Luke in the back. They’re blasting the radio, on their way to another city; the traffic moves at a snail’s pace, everyone trying to get places at rush hour. Laughing, joking, paying no mind as they merge behind a truck. It’s a boisterously bad idea, the four of them in one car like this, but they’ve all been close for a long time, and Ashton never has more fun than with the three of them. 

Ashton should have noticed, since he’s right next to Luke, who sits in the middle. He’s too busy belting something out and watching the road inching along to notice that Luke’s growing subdued and gradually breathing more heavily. By the time he finally smells the exhaust and glances to his left, Luke’s already starting to struggle. The truck is sputtering and kicking out nasty air at an alarming rate, has been for twenty minutes now, and Luke instinctively puts his hand on Ashton’s leg to steady himself. Ashton restrains himself, not wanting to get too upset before there’s reason to be, but a few more minutes of Luke’s frightening wheezing, and Jack beats him to it.

“Ben,” Jack says, leaning forward and slapping the shoulder of the leather seat.“You gotta pull off, Luke’s—”

Ben flips off the radio. “Shit,” he swears, craning his neck and scanning for an exit. Ashton feels the pressure; the next exit is some distance away, and being stuck behind the truck this long could do serious damage. Luke’s lungs can’t take this kind of distress, not with they way they are normally. Ashton can’t remember the last time Luke breathed quietly, which he doesn’t mind, but hates to hear. “Are you going to make it, Luke?”

“Yeah,” Luke says, his voice small and choked. Ashton puts his hand atop Luke’s and squeezes it, seeing the fear he tries to mask. “Gonna be fine, it’s just a little hard.”

“Pull your shirt over your mouth,” Jack instructs him. “It won’t feel as bad. Ben, get the inhaler. You brought it, right?”

Ben opens the glove compartment and pales, rummaging around in it and shaking his head after a few seconds. “I thought it was in here already. Luke, did you take it out?”

“Maybe,” Luke says, his voice muffled. “I don’t remember.”

They’re stashed all around Luke’s house, one in nearly every room  _ just in case.  _ And now there’s none, none of the medicine that clears Luke’s lungs up . Home is hours away, and he’s not going to make it there in time in this traffic. “How long will it take to get to the exit?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t get there any faster.”

“Can you merge with another lane?”

“Do you see any room, huh?” Ben bites out. His knuckles whiten at the wheel. “It should be okay. Fifteen minutes, tops.”

“I can’t breathe,” Luke ventures. He keeps his shirt pinned over his nose with pale fingers, but Ashton can hear how heavy he’s breathing. He’s blocking out the exhaust, but the reduced oxygen level isn’t good for him either. 

“Come on, Luke, just hang in,” Ben says, banging his head against the headrest. The music has stopped and Ashton feels his own hackles raised. Luke drops his shirt so he can breathe better and coughs, jerking forward in his seat. His body stills after a short round and he slumps slightly toward Jack.

It’s alarming for Ashton, though he’s seen Luke slip like this before, only usually they were in a hospital and he was already reaching for the call button. Now, stuck in a car moving inches on the freeway, he feels the panic set in. Luke stays quiet and calm, heaving in breaths that sound painful and have his fingers clenching over the edge of the seat; Ashton is only thankful that he’s trying to stay calm, at the risk of his throat closing off in a panic attack the way it did back when he was 19. Jack rests a hand in his hair. After a few more minutes, Luke launches into another rattling coughing fit, and Jack loses his calm. 

“That’s it,” Jack says, unbuckling his seatbelt and then Luke’s. “Come on. Ashton, get out of the car. If we have to walk to a hospital, then we have to walk.”

“There’s no sidewalk,” Luke says, shaking his head and wheezing so deeply his eyes begin to roll a little. “I’m gonna die.”

“Not on my watch,” Jack snaps, and Ashton opens the door. “Ashton, I need you to pull up directions to the nearest hospital. Ben, when you get out of here, call Mum and Dad and tell them what happened.”

Ashton feels strange and scrutinized as he steps out on the open highway, less afraid of being run over as he is of the backlash. Already, he hears some honking here and there, and someone yell from their car, “What are you doing, man?”

He takes Luke’s clammy hand and tugs him out of the car, Jack close behind. Luke stumbles, the cold air making it even harder to breathe and leaving him weak and dizzy. Jack wastes no time in pulling Luke’s arm over one of his shoulders and scooping him up like a child. Luke’s head lolls back, nearly upside down. Jack struggles to bear his weight, though Luke is thin from the energy he burns simply trying to breathe and Jack is well-built from his work as a carpenter. Luke’s lankiness is difficult to balance.

The honks and yells die down when people see, even distantly, that something is wrong with Luke. The knot in Ashton’s stomach remains as they hurry to the side of the freeway, slithering past drivers whose heads turn, watching Jack carry Luke and Ashton follow. Jack shifts to get his elbow under Luke’s head to avoid cutting off his air passage, but Ashton is growing more and more afraid as Luke reaches up to fist Jack’s jacket, desperate to ground himself with something.

“Nearest hospital is twenty-two minutes away,” Ashton pants, dismayed. “That’s by car.”

“Fuck,” Jack swears, and he sounds close to tears. They’re completely lost on the side of the freeway, following Ashton’s phone’s lighthearted instructions. Every now and again Jack pauses, catches his breath in the chilly air, and Luke asks in a trembly voice if they’re any closer. But they’re not even off the freeway, even though they’re moving faster than Ben’s car could at this rate. “Ashton, can you call an ambulance to meet us at the end of the freeway? There’s no way he’s going to make it. He’s panicking.”

The funny thing is that Ashton hadn’t even been able to separate Luke’s fear breathing from his obstructed breathing. But Jack had. Jack doesn’t need to hear it from Luke himself to notice how Luke just wants to touch him all of a sudden, like a newborn baby who shakes and wants to be held. But Ashton’s job is the practical; guide them off this damned highway, call an ambulance. He doesn’t get to stop and comfort Luke.

They take the first branch off the freeway they can, and Ashton calls the ambulance when they reach a long strip of commercial property while Jack sits down on the curb, laying Luke down with his head cradled in his lap. Ashton doesn’t have the heart to watch Jack stroke Luke’s hair back and try and calm him.

“You have to calm down for me,” Jack whispers in the background. “We’re going to get you there.”

Ashton’s stomach churns, but he goes through the motions, knowing that it could be the last time he does.

\---

It’s hours and hours later, and the night has begun to stretch into the morning. Luke lies feet away, oxygen mask secured back over his face and a needle in his wrist to feed him more medication. There’s a tube coming out from Luke’s side under his arm, letting the air out from his collapsed lung, but the logistics of which Ashton couldn’t tell of.

It’s a little terrifying, honestly.

Luke stares at the ceiling. He’s barely breathing. Everything is so invasive, so frightening, and whenever he heaves a shudder breath his toes curl and his fingers clench, though they’re less blue than they’d been when he came in. The heart monitor shows that his heart is working far too hard, weak and rapid. There are so many things wrong with Luke that Ashton hasn’t found it in himself to utter a single word of comfort. Instead, he sits back, watching Luke’s mother sit by his side, singing him all the lullabies she can think of.

Ashton wonders what she’s lulling him to, temporary or permanent sleep.

Luke’s father isn’t allowed to come inside. Liz doesn’t let him anymore. He’s been cleansed, but not forgiven. The smell of smoke comes only from their memories and their burning lives. Luke’s brothers sit on his other side, vying to hold his hand and wipe his sweaty forehead. Luke’s been silently crying ever since they brought him back from surgery. Every now and then, whoever has the tissues or the washcloth will move from his forehead to his cheeks.

Luke’s mother stops now and then to tell him not to cry and stuff his nose up when he’s already struggling to breathe, but he can’t help it. Finally, between lullabies, he speaks, his voice scratchy and choked. “I want to talk to Ashton,” he says, startling Ashton when he hears his name. “Just for a few minutes.”

There’s a long silence, and Luke adds, chest jerking up in a spasm as he tries to suppress his tears, “Please.”

His mother rises first, pressing a kiss to his forehead and murmuring, “I’ll be right outside if you need me.” She gestures for Jack and Ben to follow, and reluctantly, Ben hands Ashton the washcloth and the bowl of water that should probably be changed. Ashton dips the cloth back in anyway, squeezing out the extra water.

He takes a seat where Luke’s mother had been and reaches out to put his hand over where Luke’s twitches unhappily at his throat, like he could claw it open and let the air in that way. Ashton’s own hand is steadier and warmer, and yet it’s not enough.

“What’s on your mind, love?” Ashton murmurs, smiling as if this isn’t killing him inside the way it is. 

“I’m dying,” Luke says, and tries to smile back at his own joke and sobs instead. He trembles under Ashton’s touch and squeezes Ashton’s hand, pulling it to his cheek. Ashton’s knuckles brush the plastic mask and the wetness of his skin, so he reaches up with the damp washcloth to wipe them away again. “I think I’m really dying this time.”

**_You finally stretched your feet and ghosted away from me._ **

“No, you’re not,” Ashton says, wiping up his own tears. His chest is going to cave in any second, he’s sure it will, because he can’t bear it. He can’t stand seeing Luke in such immense pain and fear, and he won’t let Luke admit he’s going to die. “You’re just going to sleep.”

“That’s death, you fuckface,” Luke sobs, but he’s laughing now through it, and it makes it just a bit easier to bear. “I’m scared, Ash.”

Ashton shushes him softly and leans forward, kissing his fragile shoulder. He thinks his words through thoroughly before he speaks. “Imagine a world where you’re not in pain anymore,” he says, and Luke shudders beneath him. “That’s what I have always wanted for you.”

“I’m still afraid,” Luke sniffles. His eyes are so red and puffy Ashton wishes he could just shut them and go to sleep, but he understands why Luke can’t. He’s afraid if he sleeps now he won’t come back, and Ashton can’t pull him back.

“I know,” Ashton says.

“Do you think there’s something after?” Luke whispers, clutching Ashton’s hand tighter. “A heaven, or something?”

Ashton does, but he gives Luke the answer to give him some comfort more than anything else. “I do,” he says, scooting closer and kissing Luke’s hand this time. “I think there’s something, and I think you’re going to be pain free with a brand new set of lungs and a telescope to see what everyone’s doing down here.”

“I don’t want to be lonely.”

“I bet time will pass a thousand times faster wherever you end up,” Ashton says. “I bet it’ll feel like you’re just there for a day, and we’ll be right up with you before you know it. You’re never alone. I’m still with you. Till the end, and then after.”

“You have to hold my hand the whole time.” Luke barely gets the words out, exhausted and throat worked raw. “So whoever brings me there knows he has to come back to get you someday.”

“Deal.” Ashton smiles tearfully at Luke, squeezing his hand tightly. “I won’t let go for a second. Does that make you less scared?”

“Yeah.” Luke takes a deep, shaky breath and makes as if to turn onto his side before realizing it would jolt the tube. He’s under so many sedatives and anesthetics that Ashton’s surprised he’s fighting off sleep as well as he is, and that his eyes seem so clear, but that’s just the tears sliding over his glass blue eyes, and it’s finally starting to take him. “I’m tired.”

“Sleep for a little bit,” Ashton coaxes. “I’ll be right here while you sleep. I won’t let go.”

“Promise,” Luke whispers. Ashton has never seen anyone so small and vulnerable as Luke, not in this moment. 

“I promise.” Ashton reaches up with his free hand to wipe the tears off his cheeks again. “You ready?”

**_You had to fade away, you had to leave._ **

Luke slips away like that, sleeping under the morphine. Ashton can’t tell where he is; his pulse is so low in his wrist and his eyes don’t move under his lids. His hand is cold as death already, but the heart monitor keeps on, so he doesn’t lose his faith.

He falls asleep himself for a bit, but it can’t be too long, because it’s still dark outside when the doctors decide to put him back in surgery after his pulse drops again. Ashton doesn’t know why they can’t get him to breathe when they’re trying so hard just to get oxygen in. He watches in a slow daze as they take him away, forcibly separate their hands.

“Wait,” he says, agonized when they pry his fingers away. Luke sleeps on, oblivious; how can he not tell that Ashton has broken his promise so soon? How is he so pale and limp, how can he be gone like that? No time to say goodbye, that was what last night was for. “I said I’d hold his hand. You can’t take him.”

“This is a last hope,” Liz says, quiet from having cried the whole night like everyone else. “Go home. We’ll call you when he’s ready to go.”

“I said I’d hold his hand,” Ashton repeats, lifeless and calm. His eyes feel like someone sandpapered the insides raw. “I said, I promised. He didn’t want to be alone.”

“Go home,” Liz mumbles. “I’ll call you when he’s ready to go.”

Ashton is too tired to cry again, to do anything else but accept the empty feeling inside. Luke’s freezing hand is still imprinted in his own, and he still feels the sting. Slowly, Luke’s family disperses again from where they’ve gathered, and then he’s alone, and Luke’s somewhere alone too.

**_I’m pleading for one more time with what I know now._ **

Ashton can still see eleven-year-old Luke huddled at a lunch table, reading a book about dragons. Trying to find adventure in the dirty pages of a library book, trapped already by his lungs and a doctor’s note. Ashton asks him if he wants to play wall ball, and Luke looks so broken when he says he’s not allowed to.

Ashton sits with him that lunch, a little ghost who laughs like wind chimes and gives up like lead. Ashton sits with him every lunch, because he’s just as alone, or so he thinks. In the end, he can’t figure out who’s more alone.

**_I’m begging for the same flake to fall twice for the first time._ **

They’re nineteen, holed up in Luke’s hospital room. The door is locked. Luke doesn’t want to die a virgin, and Ashton doesn’t want to miss out on the beautiful, heavenly face Luke makes when he comes. And God, does he look like an angel, sweaty hair and discarded hospital gown and an oxygen mask spewing air into air, arching his back off the thin mattress when he finally comes, so hard he can’t breathe again. Ashton asks him if he regrets it, says that they shouldn’t have done it, but Luke is laughing when the nurses come in and his mother tries, horrified, to button him back into his hospital gown.

They don’t do that again.

**_I’m begging for what wasn’t said._ **

And Ashton’s himself again, not the him he was any years ago, but twenty-three years old and walking home ankle deep in wet slush, crying again as the sun starts to rise. Luke is gone, Luke is going, Luke is coming back to him. Someone’s going to call him tonight, or today, and tell him.

**_That night the snow shaped the land, and I walked home._ **

His shoes and jeans soak through, numbing his toes and he doesn’t  _ care _ , because it hurts and it should. He can’t put a name to what he’s feeling. He’s going to walk through that front door when he gets home and peel his clothes off and lie in the bathtub, soaking his red extremities until he feels it again and it hurts more, the feeling of blood flowing back in. His mother is going to cry with him and he’s going to scream at his little brother to leave the room, because his best friend boyfriend lover soulmate is going to die, he’s got a hole in his lungs and even if he didn’t, they wouldn’t be strong enough anyway. 

But he’s going to have enough time to go back to the hospital and see what they did to try and grant Luke just a few hours more, so he can hold his hand like he said he would and take him to that great farewell.

**_I laughed the whole way, because I suppose if it hurts it’s worth it_ **

Ashton is on his knees in the snow, thinking of lying down here and letting it suffocate him, freeze him. He tastes Luke in the icy snow, remembering the feeling of his cold lips and cold hands. 

Luke won’t die for a miracle year, but Ashton rots that night.

**_but now the ghost is me._ **


End file.
